


children of the war

by evanui



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Battle of Hogwarts, Character Study, Childhood, Dumbledore's Army, Freeform, Gen, Introspection, Memories, Room of Requirement, Stream of Consciousness, Tom Riddle's Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25051186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanui/pseuds/evanui
Summary: They say she is too young to fight."You’re underage, Ginny." "You’re not old enough, it's too dangerous, you shouldn't see these things." "Stay in the Room of Requirement, Ginny, you’re a child playing at adults’ games."A child.Is that what she is?Ginny remembers being a general. Hexing Death Eaters, teaching self-defense, painting taunts and recruiting messages on the walls. She trained and led an army. Stole ancient swords. Faced Unforgivable Curses and survived. She remembers the constant fear of capture or imprisonment, the pain that lingered long after the Cruciatus Curse ended and she was left gasping on the floor. These scars on her face, these curses in her wand—these are not the things of a child.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	children of the war

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

They say she is too young to fight.

_You’re underage, Ginny. You’re not old enough, it's too dangerous, you shouldn't see these things. Stay in the Room of Requirement, Ginny, you’re a child playing at adults’ games._

A child.

Is that what she is?

Ginny remembers being a general. Hexing Death Eaters, teaching self-defense, painting _Dumbledore’s Army, still recruiting_ on the walls. She trained and led an army. Stole ancient swords. Faced Unforgivable Curses and survived. She remembers the constant fear of capture or imprisonment, the pain that lingered long after the Cruciatus Curse ended and she was left gasping on the floor. These scars on her face, these curses in her wand—these are not the things of a child.

She remembers practicing hexes and charms in this very room. Learning to defend herself, since no one else could do it for her. Fourteen years old, and already a warrior.

Ginny remembers the cold breath of the dementor on the train, the way it stole brothers’ jokes and friends’ laughter and the rush of wind on a broom. She remembers sitting there, stiff and trembling, forcing the emptiness and despair deep down inside her where no one could ever see. She remembers the nightmares she had for weeks after.

The dementors brought it out, but the darkness came from inside her. She was not a child then.

She remembers bloody hands and gutted chickens, hidden diaries and missing nights. Colin’s glassy stare, Hermione’s stone-cold hands. It was Voldemort, they told her, not her. She was only a puppet.

She wonders, though, whether a different puppet would have stopped him. Whether, if it had been Harry or Ron or Hermione, there would still have been statue children and blood on the walls. Whether they would have realized at once and fought him off. Because she remembers the _anger_ whenever she opened that diary, the all-consuming anger at the whole world for ignoring her. Tom had understood the anger, the loneliness. They were not so different, he told her, and she is afraid that he might have been right.

The adults say it was Voldemort, but she wonders how much of it was her. How much of it had been buried deep within her, and Voldemort had only woken it. There was darkness beneath Ginny’s bright fire, even then.

She remembers breaking into her brothers’ broom shed and teaching herself to fly. The exhilarating rush of wind against her body as she plummeted to the ground, only to pull up at the last moment. The rush of stealing, of sneaking out at night.

She had been a child to the rest of the world, a sweet little girl with a celebrity crush and stars in her eyes. Behind those stars hid resentment—for her parents, who patronized and over-protected; for her brothers, who dismissed and excluded. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she was little or because she was a girl; all she knew was that though there were eight other people in her house, she lived alone.

They say she shouldn’t know darkness. They say Voldemort is too dangerous for a child.

Well, too late, Ginny thinks. She is already familiar with darkness. She has met Voldemort, known him, been him. She has never felt like a child.

Ginny wonders, then, if any of them have. If this fragile, innocent being they call _child_ exists at all.

She remembers Luna and the thestrals, how Luna faces death like an old friend. The bubblegum wrappers Neville carries in his pocket, the way his face twists when the others talk about their parents. Michael, barely able to walk after the torture he received for freeing a first year from the Carrows’ chains. Cho’s tears and Marietta’s scars.

And she thinks of Harry—she always thinks of Harry, the pain in his forehead and the snakes in his voice and the anger in his eyes.

They all have pieces of Voldemort inside them, these children of the war.

She wonders whether it would be easier for them if they were of age. But she thinks of old Mad-Eye’s paranoia and her mother’s clock, and she knows that darkness does not discriminate.

* * *

Harry asks her to leave the Room of Requirement for a moment, and now she has a choice.

She could stay in the Room. She is young; she has the right to safety, if she wants it. There is no shame in acknowledging she is not ready yet.

But Ginny is a Gryffindor, and she fights her fears. She is afraid of Voldemort, waiting for her outside. She is afraid of the Voldemort inside her, always in the background. Perhaps she is a child, but she is a child who knows darkness; she is a child who will grow up in the world that this battle builds.

Mom, Dad, Lupin, Tonks—their war was fought seventeen years ago. They will fight it again in a heartbeat, but this time it is not for them.

This is her war.


End file.
